Hasta La Creative!

Last month, Norwegian Cruise Lines followed its competitor Royal Caribbean in announcing a review of both its creative and media agencies. As our colleague Andrew McMains put it, “it’s raining cruise line searches.”

When the review was first announced, we knew only that it followed the resignation of Norwegian’s president/ascension of his successor Andy Stuart in March and that Martin would not defend its business on the creative side. Now we hear that, like Royal Caribbean, this review is nearing its end.

A source tells us that three finalists made their respective pitches last week in the client’s headquarters of Miami and that the trio will be reduced to a duo this week.

According to multiple sources, these three shops are still in the running:

• CP+B
• TBWAChiatDay
• R&R Partners

This lineup would make sense: CP+B has a major office in Miami and R&R (the shop behind the “What Happens Here” tagline) specializes in travel. TBWA’s recent Airbnb win would not conflict directly with Norwegian because the two companies serve very different audiences.

But no one will confirm this claim, so for now it remains a rumor. Whichever shop wins will deal with a slightly diminished client; Norwegian’s media spend dropped from $45M to $33M last year.

We expect announcements regarding both of these reviews by the end of the month.

AgencySpy readers are a notoriously combative bunch, but we think they can reach general agreement on one point: the advertising industry is so ridiculous that it often resists parody.

The Miami Ad School’s South American wing ESPM recently began offering two-year courses in writing, art direction, and graphic design at its Brazilian offices in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and the institution worked with F/Nazca Saatchi&Saatchi Brazil to create a new campaign raising awareness of that fact.

The first spot in the series, “Hair,” conveys a simple message: if you attend our programs, certain eternally gullible people will be far more likely to pay you good money to come up with stuff like this.

If hair can sing, then so can sloths; we’re frankly amazed to report that we have yet to see this particular trope put to use in a REAL ad.

Finally, the third case study in the “ad student, this could be YOUR life” series concerns a lounge pianist with a few too many hands on his hands.

We’re most interested in the concept of spraying deodorant directly on one’s chest; have we been doing it wrong all along?!

This is the first campaign created by F/Nazca Saatchi&Saatchi for ESPM since the shop won the account back in August of 2014. According to the release, it will be “adapted” to promote two-year programs at the Ad School locations around the world: Miami, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Hamburg, Madrid, and Mumbai.

We wonder how much real adaptation will be required, though. The ridiculousness of the ad discipline easily transcends any linguistic/cultural barriers.

On that note, here’s some print work:

The Royal Caribbean creative review for North America, announced back in February, appears to be nearing its conclusion.

A couple of weeks ago an almost-precise source told us that the number of agencies involved had narrowed to three, and a company rep later confirmed to our colleague that four shops were competing for the business.

Now a reader tells us that the group of four is down to two.

We can’t yet confirm this tip, and the client has not been particularly forthcoming in the past. But the claim is surprising in that our source says the two parties eliminated were the biggest and “edgiest” agencies involved.

This leads us to believe that, as with many other clients, Royal Caribbean wants to play things relatively safe and scale down future campaigns in the interest of minimizing both risks and costs.

We should get the official word soon enough.

The IPG-owned, Brooklyn-based agency Huge recently created a separate San Francisco entity in order to serve a single client: Apple.

The new agency has a name (Elephant), a homepage, a Foursquare listing, an office several blocks from Huge San Francisco, and a not-quite-accurate entry on IPG’s own site. (The holding company apparently chose and registered the pachyderm name in 2012 before its newest operation came to be.)

Yet — as with Omnicom’s MAL, another agency created strictly for Apple — communications regarding Elephant are nearly nonexistent. Its website clarifies that visits to its office are “by appointment only,” and since its inception it has functioned as a secretive “black box” entity with no press mentions or public announcements.

Sam Weston, a Huge spokesperson, declined to comment save for the following:

“Almost a year ago we moved the Apple business to an independent entity called Elephant. Elephant works exclusively with Apple.”

This all started last April when, as reported in AdAge, Apple chose to greatly expand its digital marketing efforts by signing with four new agencies: AKQA and Huge on the West Coast and Area 17 and Kettle in New York.

Elephant came to be almost immediately and, while the agency did not specifically address the “why” behind the decision to create an “independent entity,”the move would appear to stem from a desire to avoid an overlapping of teams on competing accounts. (Huge has worked with Google and Samsung, two of Apple’s chief rivals in the digital space.)

Last year, Apple’s at-times-uneven relationship with MAL went public via internal emails revealed in court and reinforced the fact that the client is very particular about its agencies.

This is not a secret…and the existence of Elephant isn’t quite a secret either. For example, various employees have used the #helloelephant tag on Instagram to share images of the design themes in its San Francisco office:

#helloelephant pic.twitter.com/QKfRyrGJTf

— Fernanda Saboia (@saboia) March 28, 2015

Here are members of the Elephant team celebrating in late 2014:

…and here are some pics from the agency’s recent one-year anniversary party:

What’s less clear is who does what at the shop. When the AdAge story ran last year, sources said that the four agencies hired by Apple would work on “user experience and digital strategy, among other elements,” and, given past work from Huge and AKQA, that would appear to be an accurate summary.

While Elephant’s work is all digital, it does not collaborate with any of the agencies Apple signed in 2014 (or MAL, for that matter).

Throughout the past year, members of the Huge team have moved over to Elephant. But the specifics regarding those changes are, again, not clear. A source estimates that Elephant currently employs 30 people who operate with complete independence from the larger Huge organization, but the social media posts above would appear to indicate that the two agencies do share some employees or, at the very least, that Huge staffers sometimes visit the other office.

The larger IPG organization has no comment on Elephant and, given Apple’s history, the client will not mention the work done by its newest digital agency anytime soon.

The world’s biggest cruise lines are in agency review mode.

Two weeks ago, Norwegian (former AOR Martin) announced that it would follow Royal Caribbean in launching a review of its creative and media business.

The reviews have something in common: in both cases, the incumbent AOR will not be participating. (JWT does reportedly plan to maintain some role on the account, which has been spread across offices on multiple continents.)

The Norwegian pitch just started, but Royal Caribbean already resolved its UK review by choosing TBWALondon. Now we hear that the company is very close to picking a winner from the three remaining candidates for stateside creative work.

The nameless agencies still standing:

• This shop may seem to hold a significant advantage due to the fact that its creative leader worked on the business at another agency on a different coast a decade ago. (Current Royal president/COO Adam Goldstein worked on the client’s international business at the time, so he might favor going with a familiar party.)
• The second agency has been interested in the cruise space for some time: it was one of the finalists in the review that saw Norwegian go from GSD&M to Martin in 2011. While it has not had a cruise line on its client roster in the past, it does have experience creating emotional campaigns for travel brands in case Royal Caribbean wants to imitate Carnival’s Super Bowl work by BBDO.
• The company’s third and perhaps most risky option is an agency that has set itself apart by specializing in self-referential, digitally-powered ads that make fun of advertising itself. The agency also knows its way around celebrity spokespeople, though edgy/famous doesn’t seem like the most obvious direction for such a client to take…

We hear that some changes are afoot at Dallas-based MEplusYOU.

The Agencies of Change shop, which officially rebranded from imc2 almost exactly three years ago, lost its creative lead — and we hear that it may drop its new name as well.

Renee McKeon was promoted to ECD in September 2013 to replace the departing CCO and FCB veteran Michael Davis, who left to run brand creative for DVD rental company Redbox (he’s now head of creative at Chicago’s Conversant Media).

Last month, McKeon also left MEplusYou after more than 15 years for an ECD/Senior UX position with nearby Bottle Rocket (which was acquired by WPP in 2013). That agency, which specializes in mobile app and software design and includes Starwood, BET, Coca-Cola, and Showtime among its clients, often works in concert with Ogilvy’s tech teams.

Bottle Rocket does not seem to have announced her arrival, and GCD Jason Shipp is the only creative currently listed on MEplusYOU’s people page.

A small-scale exodus of sorts occurred at the agency last Summer as well: within the space of several months, CSO Mark McKinney and SVP Tim Rumpler left for Dallas agency TM Advertising while former SVP of Tech Rahul Purini and VP of Program Management Melynnie Nehib went to Razorfish.

Most of the departing executives were, like McKeon, veterans of the shop: Nehib spent more than 13 years there before leaving.

A source tells us that the MEplusYOU will soon announce plans to revert to its previous moniker in a “rebranding” of sorts, but we can’t confirm that. We were unable to reach a relevant party within the agency itself.

Seattle-based Creature intrigued a few parties around the industry back in June by hiring a new president from a place very far outside the agency world: local politics.

James Keblas spent nine years as director of Seattle’s Office of Film + Music before being fired by the mayor in 2014. Creature then hired him thanks, at least in part, to the success of the “Commercialize Seattle” campaign, which encouraged agencies to promote the city as a cultural/production destination.

Now, it seems that public service is calling Keblas’ name once again. Last week, he officially filed to run for one of the city council’s “at-large seats” created by a recent redistricting process. He’s currently one of 40 candidates, but confirmed his plans to run with local blog The Stranger two weeks ago despite the fact that he “doesn’t have any specific policy proposals yet.”

City council is not technically a full-time job, but the campaign itself will inevitably affect Keblas’ ability to retain his position with the agency.

In other Creature news, client IGT (International Game Technology) is reviewing its account. Creature helped launch the client’s DoubleDown Casino mobile game product last year as part of a campaign that included interactive sites.

IGT, which bought the company responsible for DoubleDown, just completed its own merger today: the “slot machine manufacturing juggernaut” was acquired by Italian company GTECH, and the resulting company is “the world’s top gaming machine manufacturer”; its CEO rang the bell to start trading on Wall Street this morning.

The client gave us “no comment” on the review, which is a standard move for a company that just went through major leadership changes and now faces new pressure to boost its stock prices.

We have not yet heard back from Creature regarding Keblas’ future with the agency.

Updates when they come in.

Today we hear through the agency grapevine that a certain shop which recently expanded to a certain American city wants a piece of business from one of the world’s biggest beer distributors.

We hear that executives at this agency are currently pitching the company — but, like many businesses in this category, it’s a multi-headed hydra operating several different “brands” at once.

In fact, the company’s largest property recently ended a contentious pitch process by choosing a new agency to run its creative. That agency’s first TV work for the new client was so unique that one might even say there’s no ad exactly like it.

(The beer in question may or may not appear in the image above.)

We’ve yet to receive a statement from the agency, but multiple sources tell us that Dave Clemans is no longer executive creative director at Omnicom’s Colangelo Synergy Marketing.

Clemans joined the Darien, Connecticut-based shop less than two years ago after spending a year and a half as ECD at Taxi’s New York office; both the recent appointment and the previous one earned writeups in Adweek.

The agency, which counts Unilever, Pepsi, the NFL, and others among its past/current clients and focuses primarily on “promotions and shopper marketing” rather than traditional creative, developed the position for Clemans before he joined in the Summer of 2013.

At the time, he told Noreen O’Leary that “brands realize they need a lot of disciplines so we’re trying to figure out how to make this work for them.”

Clemans began his career in the creative department at Crispin and spent time at both GS&P and The Martin Agency before moving into the ECD position at CHI&Partners. He held that role for more than two years and then joined Taxi, which he left amidst a larger executive shakeup led by the departure of Durk Barnhill (now CEO of Saatchi New York).

Clemans was one of many who worked on the VW account at CP+B; other notable projects include Best Buy, Virgin, Burger King’s European campaigns, and Crispin’s anti-tobacco work.

Again, the agency has yet to respond to our requests for comment on why its director left or whether it looks to replace him, though one of our sources claims that his departure was part of a series of layoffs.

Updates if we get them.

Today we can confirm that CP+B has lost the Vitaminwater account after nearly four years.

Crispin won the Coca-Cola property’s business in early 2011, leading AdAge to declare that the agency had achieved “a stronger foothold” on the parent company’s roster. That headline referenced the Coke Zero account, which went to Droga5 in 2012; Ogilvy won that business last August.

The matter of where the work will go next is less clear, but a source close to the matter tells us that, as in the case of Coke Zero, WPP can claim victory.

We cannot confirm which specific agency will handle creative, but Coca-Cola did recently expand its relationship with the WPP organization by both giving its Coke Zero account to Ogilvy (which had worked on the brand in the past) and assigning all PR/marketing work for the upcoming Uefa Euro 2016 football tournament to a group of WPP firms including Possible, Geometry Global, and Media-Com.

Also: this move only concerns the primary Vitaminwater account and not Smartwater or Fruitwater, which ran ads created by Zambezi last year.

CP+B’s most recent notable campaign for the now-former client starred Kevin Hart and debuted in May 2014.